On The Art of Reading eBook

But of another thing, Gentlemen, I am certain:
that we were badly taught in that these books, while
preached to us as equivalent, were kept in separate
compartments. We were taught the books of Kings
and Chronicles as history. The prophets were the
Prophets, inspired men predicting the future which
they only did by chance, as every inspired man does.
Isaiah was never put into relation with his time at
all; which means everything to our understanding of
Isaiah, whether of Jerusalem or of Babylon. We
ploughed through Kings and Chronicles, and made out
lists of rulers, with dates and capital events.
Isaiah was all fine writing about nothing at all,
and historically we were concerned with him only to
verify some far-fetched reference to the Messiah in
this or that Evangelist. But there is not, never
has been, really fine literature—­like Isaiah—­composed
about nothing at all: and in the mere matter
of prognostication I doubt if such experts as Zadkiel
and Old Moore have anything to fear from any School
of Writing we can build up in Cambridge. But
if we had only been taught to read Isaiah concurrently
with the Books of the Kings, what a fire it would
have kindled among the dry bones of our studies!

Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Go forth
now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy son,
at the end of the conduit of the upper pool in the
highway of the fuller’s field.

Scholars, of course, know the political significance
of that famous meeting. But if we had only known
it; if we had only been taught what Assyria was—­with
its successive monarchs Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser,
Sargon, Sennacherib; and why Syria and Israel and
Egypt were trying to cajole or force Judah into alliance;
what a difference (I say) this passage would have meant
to us!

VIII

I daresay, after all, that the best way is not to
bother a boy too early and overmuch with history;
that the best way is to let him ramp at first through
the Scriptures even as he might through “The
Arabian Nights”: to let him take the books
as they come, merely indicating, for instance, that
Job is a great poem, the Psalms great lyrics, the
story of Ruth a lovely idyll, the Song of Songs the
perfection of an Eastern love-poem. Well and what
then? He will certainly get less of “The
Cotter’s Saturday Night” into it, and
certainly more of the truth of the East. There
he will feel the whole splendid barbaric story for
himself: the flocks of Abraham and Laban:
the trek of Jacob’s sons to Egypt for corn:
the figures of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the gleaning,
and Rispah beneath the gibbet: Sisera bowing in
weariness: Saul—­great Saul—­by
the tent-prop with the jewels in his turban:

All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies
courageous at heart.

Or consider—­to choose one or two pictures
out of the tremendous procession—­consider
Michal, Saul’s royal daughter: how first
she is given in marriage to David to be a snare for
him; how loving him she saves his life, letting him
down from the window and dressing up an image on the
bed in his place: how, later, she is handed over
to another husband Phaltiel, how David demands her
back, and she goes: